My favorite character out of the Mane Six would be Fluttershy, although I think Princess Luna is my favorite character overall.

Not lumping you in with these guys but here's some interviews with some attendees of Bronycon:[snip]

Stern wants to make good radio and would of course imply that all male fans of the show are perverts to are pleasuring themselves to MPL-themed porn. While that certainly does take place, it’s a tiny percentage of the fandom. The show is well-written, well-animated, and has interesting themes and characters. Yes, MLP: FIM is aimed at young girls, but it’s capable of being watched by people of all ages without feeling like your intelligence is being insulted. I’d also place cartoons like The Powerpuff Girls, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, and the two Avatar: The Last Airbender series into that category. And yes, I’ve watched all of those. (As an aside, Lauren Faust, the creator of the Friendship is Magic incarnation of the MLP cartoon franchise, worked on both The Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s, and she’s the spouse of Craig McCracken, who was the creator and producer of both those shows and also was the director and art director of Dexter’s Laboratory.)

I’m always bemused when I get a negative response when I say I’m a fan of MLP: FIM when people probably wouldn’t bat an eye if I said I was a viewer of mind-numbing garbage like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo or one of various The Real Housewives incarnations.

Can we talk about political correctness for a moment. I get really aggravated with it lately. Everybody's getting offended at the littlest things. Everybody's apologizing. Everybody's getting fired. I remember a couple years back when Miley Cyrus took a picture where she squinted her eyes and all of a sudden she had some asian organization demand an apology and she broke down after a few days and did. When did we become so afraid to speak and when did we become so damn sensitive. Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Diaz probably didn't even mean it the way some could find it offensive, more like a 'wimp'. Yet here he is getting suspended, shortly after another UFC fighter got suspended (for more serious comments, but hey, this used to be a free country with free speech). And how many times have we seen people in the media get in trouble for saying something 'inappropriate'. A simple 'sorry' doesn't work anymore, people actually lose jobs.

My favorite character out of the Mane Six would be Fluttershy, although I think Princess Luna is my favorite character overall.

Not lumping you in with these guys but here's some interviews with some attendees of Bronycon:[snip]

Stern wants to make good radio and would of course imply that all male fans of the show are perverts to are pleasuring themselves to MPL-themed porn. While that certainly does take place, it’s a tiny percentage of the fandom. The show is well-written, well-animated, and has interesting themes and characters. Yes, MLP: FIM is aimed at young girls, but it’s capable of being watched by people of all ages without feeling like your intelligence is being insulted. I’d also place cartoons like The Powerpuff Girls, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, and the two Avatar: The Last Airbender series into that category. And yes, I’ve watched all of those. (As an aside, Lauren Faust, the creator of the Friendship is Magic incarnation of the MLP cartoon franchise, worked on both The Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s, and she’s the spouse of Craig McCracken, who was the creator and producer of both those shows and also was the director and art director of Dexter’s Laboratory.)

I’m always bemused when I get a negative response when I say I’m a fan of MLP: FIM when people probably wouldn’t bat an eye if I said I was a viewer of mind-numbing garbage like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo or one of various The Real Housewives incarnations.

Agreed, that's why I said I wasn't lumping you in with them. I'm with you on The Powerpuff girls. Having younger kids at the time I've seen all of them over and over. My favorite incidental character:

Sarcastic wrote:Can we talk about political correctness for a moment. I get really aggravated with it lately. Everybody's getting offended at the littlest things. Everybody's apologizing. Everybody's getting fired. I remember a couple years back when Miley Cyrus took a picture where she squinted her eyes and all of a sudden she had some asian organization demand an apology and she broke down after a few days and did. When did we become so afraid to speak and when did we become so damn sensitive. Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Diaz probably didn't even mean it the way some could find it offensive, more like a 'wimp'. Yet here he is getting suspended, shortly after another UFC fighter got suspended (for more serious comments, but hey, this used to be a free country with free speech). And how many times have we seen people in the media get in trouble for saying something 'inappropriate'. A simple 'sorry' doesn't work anymore, people actually lose jobs.

King Sid the Great 87 wrote:In the run up to a national election, making the requirements for getting approval so unnecessarily cumbersome that many groups (leaning towards one party) withdrew their applications is not a problem? Letting files gather dust for a year before getting back to the applicants is not a problem?

Surely you jest.

U.S. law states that 501(c)(4) organizations must be "exclusively" engaged in 'social welfare' activities. In other words, political activity from a 501(c)(4) ist verboten. However, for about 50 years now the IRS enforcement regulation has defined these groups as "primarily" social welfare. That immediately introduces a level of discretion into what was intended to be a binary process.

Now flash forward to 2008 and the advent of the Tea Party, and then in 2010 we were blessed with Citizens United. These two factors led to a marked increase in the number of tax exempt applications for conservative-leaning groups - that was not matched by a commensurate increase in progressive/liberal applications - that inundated the IRS. Much of this work should have been straightforward; are you political, or are you not? But because of the conflict in enforcement regulations and the actual law meant to be enforced, human error crept in. The agents tried to find a way to quickly identify groups that might be political in nature ("Tea Party", "patriot", etc) that best coincided with increased population of requests, and guess what? Almost all of them were conservative.

There is no ideological test being applied here, just a political one... which is appropriate. However, it was a confluence of confusing regulations and borderline incompetence on the part of the IRS agents charged with reviewing and approving these applications that led to the appearance of impropriety. And because the number of applications were so wildly skewed towards conservative groups, they bore the brunt of this mismanagement.

The solution is easy: rescind the regulation that contains the word "primarily", and end the farce of 'social welfare' organizations like Americans for Prosperity, American Crossroads, American Bridge 21st Century, Priorities USA Action, etc contributing a quatrillion dollars to the political foodarackacycle despite ostensibly being prohibited from doing so by law. Then these companies can re-file as 527s if they wish to maintain their tax-exempt status.

btw, if some of you don't get why I'm bringing up this new political correctness when speaking, consider that yesterday's post about talking to women in a certain manner on college campus and the possibility of being expelled is very much a part of what I'm talking about.

It all comes back to what I consider to be the fundamental idiocy of the concept of political contributions being a constitutionally-protected form of free speech. Buckley is the problem, Citizens United was just the eventual natural outcome.

It was the Centennial Of Naval Aviation (CONA) kickoff event in February 2011. They had a whole bunch of current and legacy aircraft specially painted in different color schemes representing the history of Naval Aviation. The day culminated with an air parade of an example of just about every air worthy type the Navy and Marine Corps have ever operated; all in all there were over 200 aircraft involved in the fly by. Which was nuts, because North Island is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the departure corridor for the San Diego airport just about a mile to the left of that picture, across the bay.

Anyway, one of the exhibits was this wooden mockup of the X-47B drone. Look; you can get up close and touch it!

In one of those articles on that thing, some army spokesman (or is it 'spokesperson'... i'm getting paranoid speaking these days) or whoever the idiot was said that drones (unmanned aircraft) are cool because they minimize human risk. And I immediately thought to myself... yeah, but not for the dude that's getting blown up with a missile!!!!!

That's exactly why I find them so objectionable. It completely removes blood from the 'blood & treasure' equation of determining the cost of war. In other words, using military force will become far less problematic or morally quarrelsome for political leaders. "Just send in a dozen drones to hit x, y, z and tell their Prime Minister to STFU. We must defend the freedom loving peoples of Jerkwadistan."

To me, that's terribly troublesome. Not least because, as ExPat and I were discussing last week, the U.S. is not going to have a monopoly on this technology for very long. There are already nations that have basic UAV capability, the only difference to our stuff is range and weaponization. I doubt we have five years of exclusivity left. And when that goes away, guess what? Don't be surprised when you start to hear about random Home Depots or sporting venues exploding without warning.

King Sid the Great 87 wrote:In the run up to a national election, making the requirements for getting approval so unnecessarily cumbersome that many groups (leaning towards one party) withdrew their applications is not a problem? Letting files gather dust for a year before getting back to the applicants is not a problem?

Surely you jest.

U.S. law states that 501(c)(4) organizations must be "exclusively" engaged in 'social welfare' activities. In other words, political activity from a 501(c)(4) ist verboten. However, for about 50 years now the IRS enforcement regulation has defined these groups as "primarily" social welfare. That immediately introduces a level of discretion into what was intended to be a binary process.

Now flash forward to 2008 and the advent of the Tea Party, and then in 2010 we were blessed with Citizens United. These two factors led to a marked increase in the number of tax exempt applications for conservative-leaning groups - that was not matched by a commensurate increase in progressive/liberal applications - that inundated the IRS. Much of this work should have been straightforward; are you political, or are you not? But because of the conflict in enforcement regulations and the actual law meant to be enforced, human error crept in. The agents tried to find a way to quickly identify groups that might be political in nature ("Tea Party", "patriot", etc) that best coincided with increased population of requests, and guess what? Almost all of them were conservative.

There is no ideological test being applied here, just a political one... which is appropriate. However, it was a confluence of confusing regulations and borderline incompetence on the part of the IRS agents charged with reviewing and approving these applications that led to the appearance of impropriety. And because the number of applications were so wildly skewed towards conservative groups, they bore the brunt of this mismanagement.

The solution is easy: rescind the regulation that contains the word "primarily", and end the farce of 'social welfare' organizations like Americans for Prosperity, American Crossroads, American Bridge 21st Century, Priorities USA Action, etc contributing a quatrillion dollars to the political foodarackacycle despite ostensibly being prohibited from doing so by law. Then these companies can re-file as 527s if they wish to maintain their tax-exempt status.

The auditing of businessmen such as Frank VanderSloot and physicians like Hal Scherz, who to my knowledge never applied for tax exempt status, after contributing to Romney's campaign and criticizing ObamaCare, respectively, is all just serendipity I guess.

This stinks from the head. Obama doesn't have to explicitly request things like this happened. Singling out American citizens as people with "less than reputable records" is all that he needs to do to entice someone to try to make a name for themselves all the while maintaining a story of deniability.

King Sid the Great 87 wrote:In the run up to a national election, making the requirements for getting approval so unnecessarily cumbersome that many groups (leaning towards one party) withdrew their applications is not a problem? Letting files gather dust for a year before getting back to the applicants is not a problem?

Surely you jest.

U.S. law states that 501(c)(4) organizations must be "exclusively" engaged in 'social welfare' activities. In other words, political activity from a 501(c)(4) ist verboten. However, for about 50 years now the IRS enforcement regulation has defined these groups as "primarily" social welfare. That immediately introduces a level of discretion into what was intended to be a binary process.

Now flash forward to 2008 and the advent of the Tea Party, and then in 2010 we were blessed with Citizens United. These two factors led to a marked increase in the number of tax exempt applications for conservative-leaning groups - that was not matched by a commensurate increase in progressive/liberal applications - that inundated the IRS. Much of this work should have been straightforward; are you political, or are you not? But because of the conflict in enforcement regulations and the actual law meant to be enforced, human error crept in. The agents tried to find a way to quickly identify groups that might be political in nature ("Tea Party", "patriot", etc) that best coincided with increased population of requests, and guess what? Almost all of them were conservative.

There is no ideological test being applied here, just a political one... which is appropriate. However, it was a confluence of confusing regulations and borderline incompetence on the part of the IRS agents charged with reviewing and approving these applications that led to the appearance of impropriety. And because the number of applications were so wildly skewed towards conservative groups, they bore the brunt of this mismanagement.

The solution is easy: rescind the regulation that contains the word "primarily", and end the farce of 'social welfare' organizations like Americans for Prosperity, American Crossroads, American Bridge 21st Century, Priorities USA Action, etc contributing a quatrillion dollars to the political foodarackacycle despite ostensibly being prohibited from doing so by law. Then these companies can re-file as 527s if they wish to maintain their tax-exempt status.

The auditing of businessmen such as Frank VanderSloot and physicians like Hal Scherz, who to my knowledge never applied for tax exempt status, after contributing to Romney's campaign and criticizing ObamaCare, respectively, is all just serendipity I guess.

This stinks from the head. Obama doesn't have to explicitly request things like this happened. Singling out American citizens as people with "less than reputable records" is all that he needs to do to entice someone to try to make a name for themselves all the while maintaining a story of deniability.

The Dept of labor was also sicked on Vandersloot after one of Barry's reelection websites went went after him as well as a 1/2 dozen or so other Romney contributors.His inner circle was Chicago political types; possibly the most politically corrupt city of the last century in a state that's also among the leaders in convicted governors, etc Anyone surprised that his HHS secretary Sebelius is strong arming contributions from corporations that will be involved in Obamacare? The disheartening thing about the IRS scandal is that these hacks are the Obamacare enforcement arm. Not a pretty future

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the concern about impropriety - real or even perceived - at the IRS. After all, this body represents the most tangible threat of government abuse 99% of us are ever likely to have to deal with in our lives. But there's just no 'there' there in this story. By right, this should be a front-page matter for a week or so as the officials involved are dealt with (fired, demoted, moved out of position, etc) and then it should go away, because that's the extent of it. But because it's the holy trinity of Tea Party grievances - Obama, taxes and Obamacare - we'll still be talking about it on Labor Day. There will be hearings, and press conferences, and millions of dollars will be spent, and at the end of the summer we'll be exactly where we are today. Nothing will be done about job creation, nothing will be done on immigration reform. But we'll have 25,000 pages of useless emails on the public record. Whoopie.

Meanwhile, because it involves the press and National Security, the AP phone hack story will be forgotten by the end of the month. And, as I said last week, the scandal there isn't so much that the Justice Department acted in a pretty terrifying way.... the scandal is that their actions were probably 100% legal.

As I said, the only area where the U.S. has a clear advantage is in range and 'payload'. Once countries begin overcoming those obstacles - and they will - it's just a matter of time before we start dealing with these things within our borders.